Penniless and facing eviction after a surgical operation that allows hir to change genitals at will, transgender outlaw Arie turns to sex work. Dodging the cops and the mafia, Arie thrills hir customers with hir custom-made genitals, but then one of hir mobster clients approaches Arie with hir most dangerous assignment yet - and an offer ze can't refuse.

Leonard’s apartment looked different in the daytime. At night, his neighborhood glittered with an almost theatrical sense of danger. But as Arie walked from the bus stop to Leonard’s converted warehouse loft building, ze noticed how completely ordinary his neighborhood looked — the cars parked on the streets, the trash cans and blue mailboxes on the corners, the cracked sidewalks. It made everything feel much more real, and much more dangerous.

Had ze dressed right for the occasion? Ze was wearing hir knee-high boots with the kitten heels, and a red fifties dress with a gold necklace — more feminine than usual, but also more formal, and maybe it looked wrong for the daytime. Arie played with hir necklace as the elevator took hir up to the top floor.

Leonard was sitting on the couch, barefoot and wearing slacks and a cashmere sweater, and reading an Italian sports car magazine when Arie walked in. He offered hir an espresso, or a cup of tea, as though ze wasn’t there to try on a set of tentacles in preparation to chase down and sexually violate a close friend of his. Ze said “No thank you.”

Leonard led Arie to the dining room, where ze noticed the tentacles in the glass case beneath the massive table. Arie swallowed. They were huge — the photograph hadn’t really conveyed how thick and girthy the tentacles were, nor how many of them were clustered around the genital port.

As Leonard knelt underneath the table and unlocked the glass case, Arie’s attention turned to the grand piano. A vase of blue day-lillies sat on top, and next to it, a gold-framed photograph of a woman with long blonde hair and a world-weary smile. She was standing in front of the Colosseum in Rome, arm in arm with someone who had been cropped out of the photo.

“Is this your friend?” Arie asked.

“Cynthia,” Leonard said tenderly. “Her name’s Cynthia.”

Arie jumped. In a flash ze understood why Cynthia had looked so familiar — she was the wife of Maurice Navidson, the organized crime boss who ran all the sex clubs and owned half the city. The cops had been trying to pin half a dozen murders on him for years.

And at the same time, ze understood why Leonard had been the one to arrange for Cynthia’s sick fantasy to play out in reality, and why he had been so concerned for her privacy and her safety — he was in love with her. Maybe he was just admiring her from afar, or maybe he’d been fucking her for years.

Leonard stood up. In his hands he held the tentacles, and the silver plug that would connect them to Arie’s central nervous system pointed at hir like an accusing finger.

Arie felt sick. Ze wanted to drop the tentacles and run — away from this apartment, away from Leonard, away from this life.

Calm down, ze told hirself. No one will find out. Leonard’s got even more of an interest in keeping this a secret than you do. And it’s twenty thousand fucking dollars.

“Wait,” Leonard said. “I’ll have to ask you to try them on in the bathroom. Fewer irreplaceable things in there.”Arie giggled nervously.

“They’re a little... intense,” Leonard warned as he took hir arm and led hir to the master bath.

Leonard’s master bath had a recessed tub in the marble floor, with gold-plated faucets that made it look almost like an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. The tub had been filled, and wisps of steam rose from the water.